Chapter 16 #2
“Here comes trouble,” her assistant said under her breath.
Charline slipped her a smile. “Dr. Trouble. Queen of Trouble. Trouble personified. We ought to have a code name.”
Her assistant laughed and coughed, then left the second Lisa stopped at the desk in front of Charline.
“What’s on your mind, Lisa?”
“Who says I have something on my mind?”
Charline didn’t bother to hide her eye roll. “Cut the bull. You obviously have something to say. Get it over with.”
“If you must know, I was going to ask you to have coffee with me.” She looked at her watch. “You have time, don’t you?”
“Not really. I need to get back to the stadium.” Oops. Wrong thing to say. “I mean, I have a date with Trent. Wedding preparations and all. There’s a lot to take care of.”
“I’m sure.” Lisa could not look more skeptical if she were examining a three-dollar bill.
Walking back to her office, Charline didn’t wait to discuss it further. She wasn’t surprised that Lisa was undaunted and followed her back. She came inside and took the guest chair—the one Trent had sat in the first day she’d met him. Charline went around her desk and sat down.
“What is it, Lisa? I only have a few minutes before I need to leave and I have some paperwork—”
Lisa waved a hand, a familiar dismissive gesture the woman used to signal her self-importance over all else.
“Sure. Tell me this. How the hell is it that you, of all people, of all the eligible women in this town, of anywhere, managed to snag the most eligible bachelor in the country—maybe the world?”
“You’re exaggerating.” Charline was stunned by the assertion.
Surely it was a ludicrous assumption. Although Trent was well-known worldwide—she’d seen that when she’d explored all the media stories and photos and videos about him with her sister that night.
The content had been endless. Coverage of him seemed to have no boundaries.
The photos and stories were not just about football.
“Don’t bullshit me. There has to be an angle. I bet you don’t even like football. Had you ever been to a game before you met Trent?” She paused a half beat during which Charline stared at her, trying to discern where this was going and knowing that it was bound to be anywhere but good.
“That’s what I thought. So tell me, how did you meet?”
She was prepared for this, at least. She and Trent had had to come up with something plausible, something they wouldn’t need anyone else to corroborate except Ralph Nunley.
“My old college friend Ralph Nunley introduced us. He’s the head athletic trainer for the Minutemen.”
“Figures.”
“Get over it, Lisa. So what if we met and hit it off?”
“Hit it off? That’s an understatement.” Lisa grabbed Charline’s hand off the blotter on her desk where it had been resting and lifted it to inspect the diamond up close.
“This diamond is worth at least ten grand. Trent is—or was—a confirmed bachelor. So, don’t tell me you just hit it off.
You rocked his world. Obviously.” Lisa squinted and dropped her hand.
Charline didn’t like the look. She knew the woman was thinking up all kinds of possibilities with her small, devious mind.
“Or there’s something else going on between you two. ”
“What? You’re ridiculous, you know that? I’ve seen jealousy before, but you take the prize.” Charline stood. She was taking a risk by goading her, but as Trent had told her, in cases like this, when you come under attack, the best defense was to go on the offensive. “We’re done here.”
“Jealous? You’re wrong. You’re so wrong.”
“Am I? Then stop obsessing about me and my fiancé.”
“Fine.” Lisa stood and walked out. She didn’t bother closing the door, so Charline went and closed it, then leaned against it and caught her breath as if she’d just gone ten rounds in a heavyweight bout. As a lightweight.
But maybe not. She’d held her own. For now.
But there was no time for a pat on the back. It was time to get out of there and get to the stadium.
She had officially become paranoid. The tension of worrying about Lisa Cooper and Hogarth had made her sleepless. And the worst thing was she had no one to talk to about it.
She couldn’t talk to Trent. Not anymore.
She couldn’t trust herself to share intimacies with him.
She told herself it was all because of their physical attraction, but she was deathly afraid there could be more to it.
She had to treat him strictly as her patient, one of her research subjects, a professional relationship only.
No matter that she happened to be in a pretend engagement with him.
Avoiding him was impossible. She went early to the stadium every day to take his blood and measurements, do the testing, and give him injections.
She ran the tests while he warmed up for practice or watched films or got ultrasound treatments.
As soon as he went on the field, she went out there with Ralph, bundled up, and watched him.
She kept Ralph at her side while she ministered as much as possible.
She was a coward. She couldn’t trust herself alone with Trent—didn’t want to test herself.
For show, after practice she’d been telling him she’d see him at home and leave a few minutes before him.
But she never went to his home. Not one single day or night for the entire week.
He called and she had to answer in case there was a problem, but he didn’t beg her.
Not since the first time he asked and she said no.
So maybe she did know how she managed to get through the week: she did it with his cooperation.
He didn’t push it. A part of her—a very large part, if she was honest—was disappointed, sad, and offended that he didn’t try harder to woo her back to his bed, to want her enough.
Clearly he wouldn’t be seeing any other women for the duration.
They’d both agreed to the charade of their engagement and they’d both agreed that they would see no one else to make sure there were no compromises of their public deception.
So this was it. A test of her commitment to resist Trent, to hold back on any more dangerous intimacy.
It was Saturday afternoon, and when the final whistle blew, ending the short walk-through, she watched Trent pull the helmet from his head and look straight at her, then walk her way.
Heaven help her but her heart skipped. She turned to Ralph and said, “Tell Trent I had to get back to my mother—they’re expecting me. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Are you sure you have to leave? I think Trent—”
Charline had already started walking away and she waved at Ralph as she saw Trent moving fast with that deceptive speed he had, following her toward the tunnel.
If she ran she could make it, but how would that look?
She stopped and stared down the long, dark tunnel.
She closed her eyes, prayed for strength, and turned.
Since when had she started fearing Trent? It was only because she couldn’t find the strength to resist her passion for him, their chemistry. They had an excessive attraction, but so what? What was she afraid of, really?
Even if she could get past the fact that he was a subject in her research protocol, she couldn’t get past the fact that he was playing Russian roulette with his career—and she was helping him. Guilt wore at her every time she looked at him.
Then there was the fact that she was playing Russian roulette with her own career—and he was helping her.
It was a relationship born of mutual desperation.
They were using each other. Every time they had made love—or had sex as he put it—it felt tainted.
He was a live, seething reminder of everything that she was doing wrong, of the gigantic risk she was taking.
There had been no sense of satisfaction, no afterglow of emotional warmth.
The tension they’d sought to eradicate disappeared for the time their minds had stopped functioning and their raw physical needs took over, but then afterwards it had seemed to reappear stronger and worse than before as if each act of joy was a tightening of their deal with the devil.
Her devil was him. His devil was her. The constant temptation had to go away.
But it couldn’t. She’d needed his money, needed him to finish the protocol. He needed her miracle serum.
He caught up with her in the tunnel then and said for her ears only, “Trying to run away?” His smile started out casual—that one she couldn’t stand, the one he gave everyone like it was throwaway swag from a celebrity. But the smile slipped the longer she stared back, mute.
“I have things to do. You know—”
“I know. But if you run out on me it doesn’t look good. For the charade.” He didn’t bother to keep his voice light. She heard the tightness, saw it in the tic of his jaw. Probably not good for his blood pressure.
“What would you like me to do?”
“Walk with me.” He put his arm around her as more players and others came up behind them into the tunnel and he walked her forward to the locker room door. He bent and whispered in her ear, his lips touching her earlobe. She shivered and hugged herself.
“Can I trust you not to run off?”
“I’ll stay. Don’t be long. I—”
He spun her around and caught her jaw in one hand, lifting it, and looked in her eyes.
He held her that way for a beat with his intense blue eyes, troubled and dangerously gleaming.
When she thought he would have said something, he instead lowered his head and caressed her lips with his.
A light touch, not careless, but tender.
She knew the difference. She’d felt all his variations on a kiss before.
This was by far her favorite, the way it made her gut flutter as if it were momentarily weightless.
It was by far the most dangerous kind of kiss from him.
He let her go and went through the door to the locker room, leaving her huddling and cold in the tunnel.